Michael Barclay

Michael Barclay

EFF Special Counsel

Michael Barclay specializes in the fields of patent, copyright, trade secret, and trademark litigation and client counseling, with a particular focus on electronics-related areas. He formerly was a partner at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati in Palo Alto, California. Among other cases, Michael worked on the successful First Circuit and Supreme Court appeals in Lotus v. Borland. Before entering the legal field, Michael was an engineer at Hughes Aircraft and at Intel Corporation. He presently serves as an ENE evaluator for the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. Michael received his J.D. degree from the UCLA School of Law in 1979, and A.B. (Physics) and M.S.E.E. degrees from the University of California, Berkeley.

Deeplinks Posts by Michael

EFF, joined by Public Knowledge, filed an amicus brief today asking the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to revisit one of its worst decisions ever. Three years ago this month, in Oracle v. Google, the Federal Circuit held that the Java Application Programming...

Yesterday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued a significant decision rejecting an absurd copyright claim in yoga poses. The decision is pretty entertaining, but its implications are important for technologists as well as yogis.
That’s because the opinion offers a close analysis of one...

Sadly, today the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review the Federal Circuit’s dangerous decision in Oracle v. Google. Oracle claims a copyright on the Java Application Programming Interface (API), and that Google infringed that copyright by using certain Java APIs in the Android OS. The Federal...

Much of EFF’s transparency work centers around government activities in the executive and legislative branches. But transparency in the courts is also important. That’s why yesterday we sent a letter to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit asking for greater free public access to orders issued by...

Good news! In a decision that is likely to help shape the future of online fair use, a federal court in New York has concluded that digitizing books in order to enhance research and to provide access to print-disabled individuals is lawful. The case is The Authors Guild, Inc....

The damages provisions of copyright law - up to $150,000 per infringed work without any proof of harm - are crazy. And according to the federal appeals court in Minnesota, the Constitution does not restore sanity. This week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit ...

Today the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear Microsoft’s appeal in a case that could make it easier to invalidate a patent. If successful, Microsoft’s challenge should help in the fight against bad patents by leveling the playing field for showing that a patent is invalid. A Microsoft win in...

Today EFF, joined by Public Knowledge, the Computer & Communications Industry Association and the Apache Software Foundation, filed an amicus brief asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hear a case in which Microsoft is trying to make it easier to invalidate an issued U.S. patent. If successful, this challenge...

Ending months of anticipation, yesterday the U.S. Supreme Court finally issued a ruling in Bilski v. Kappos, a business method patent case that, many hoped, would give the Court an opportunity to sharply limit these much maligned patents, or at least offer clear guidance on how business method...